Blu-Ray

Well, In order to succeed in a competivie business, You must make your product seem great.

Immagine sony saying "Eh, Our UMD isnt the best it could be, buts its all we've got.. Don't worry though, It'll only fade away ina couple years or so" People wouldnt have bought it in the first place lol
 
alvino said:
It's hard to tell now, but it'll be a niche product once it initally releases. Both formats have their pros and cons. Oh and, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are jointly released formats meaning no one company made it themselves.

Blu-Ray has great storage space, but it's expensive, disc and drive. Panasonic just released their second desktop Blu-Ray drive maybe a month ago and it cost $900. Expect PS3 games and movies to get a 10%-20% increase in price due it it's different (and expensive) manufacturing process. Paradox, Blu-Ray isn't backwards compatible with ANY current format because it doesn't share any similarities and is made completely different than DVD's or CD's. As for reading discs of different formats, that won't be hard, but you just won't see any Blu-Ray/DVD/CD hybrid discs.

HD-DVD's may have smaller storage space, but it's initial costs will be cheaper. This is due to it's manfacturing process which is very similar to the DVD, allowing it to be mass produced very quickly. One advantage HD-DVD holds is it's similarity with DVD, which allows hybrid HD-DVD/DVD discs to be made. That would be good because you could watch a certain movie in current DVD format, but once HD-DVD drives drop in price you can just flip the disc over and view the same movie, but High-Definition. :D

As for which format will fail, it's way too early to tell. All I know is that Blu-Ray's biggest backer (Sony), hasn't had the greatest track record with media storage formats. Remember the battle between Betamax and VHS? Betamax was big, and unweildy, which prompted people to buy VHS instead due to it's size and attractive price. It was cheaper because it's mechanism wasn't as complex as Betamax's, which meant production was easily done in mass quantities. Let's see...the MiniDisc? The MiniDisc hasn't had the greatest sales ever. :p Initally released as a replacement for analog Cassette tapes, it didn't sell as well in the US and Europe, probably because the Cassette was too entrenched at the time. MiniDiscs are still around, but not widely used, partly because of popularity of CD's, and Flash-based and HDD-based MP3 players. Not as big of a failure as Betamax was, but it was still a failure. Hmmm, then there is the UMD! Haha, oh man, I remember when the PSP first launched, Sony hyped up the UMD to be the next biggest in movie storage and content, now it's lost several movie studios that used to support it, like Warner Bros. Recently, sales for the UMD have dropped slowly in movies. In games, I wouldn't expect it to drop much because to play games it uses UMD anyways. It's so funny though, too see Sony hype up the UMD format so much only to see it slowly fade away. :p

That's why I personally don't like Sony. All they do is hype and when that product finally comes out, they drop the bomb and give you shit instead. Oh and they need to improve in the creativity and originality department too. Either way, only time will tell which next-generation media format will win.

I agree
 
Yeah but HD-DVD to me only seems to be useful for block buster releases, while Blu-ray to me is less for that, and more for storage.

I'd love to back up my whole drive on a 50GB (or more with the technology advancing) dual layered Blu-Ray disc.

No one seems to remember the price of DVD when that was first released...
That was very very expensive, and look at it now. Drives for cheap/discs for cheap.

Blu-Ray would do exactly the same.

Let the people who want to spend loads of money get the drives/discs first, and then when prices start to drop, more and more people will jump onto the band wagon.

I never liked UMD though, or Mini Disk. They were both rather pointless, though I saw the Minidisk potential in recorders, etc, but with Blu-Ray, I see alot more potential there.
 
Personally a Blu-ray drikve would be useful for me. I heard estsimates as high as 60 GIGs of storage even if the discs costs 10 or 15 bucks a PIECE! it' be worth it for me to buy. Frankly new techologies come out, I don't think DVDs are backwards compatiable with VHS players do you?
 
No, but you can get VHS players that also play DVD's using a different slot :p

Anyway, drives are being made, for instance PS3's, that are backward compatable with DVD, so it cant be that bad.

I've also heard for storage use, 200GB Blu-Ray discs are in the works.

1 and a 1/2 of my hard drives would fit onto that!

So yeah, when prices do drop, and they will, since its a new technology, I believe this might be Sony's first chance.

Betamax wasn't that bad. It had better quality than VHS, but it just never took off because it didn't get enough support. Blu-ray is different, as it has lots and lots of support.

I wouldn't be surprised, at least for storage use, if HD-DVD won for blockbusters, that Blu-ray ran along side HD-DVD on the computer for a while.

I mean, Mini-Disks aren't yet dead for use in Mini-disk players, and are better quality than recording using tape players (except for maybe DAT), even if music isn't released on them.
 
LOL I Know, But you can't take any old VHS player without that extra slot because thats not-backwards comptaible, anyways you CAN'T STICK A DVD into the tape slot of VHS player and hit play! Frankly I feel blu-ray is the new thing. You tell anybody ok DVD 5$, Blu-Ray, 20$, DVD 3.7 GIGs, Blu-Ray 25 GIGs. Your choice :)
 
Aye, but HD-DVD isn't that far behind in storage, but its still behind.

Anything can be made to be backward compatable. We all know, at least with DISC media, most drives available now can play DVD/CD/Audio DVD, etc.
It'll be the same with HD/DVD/Blu-ray if they both work together somehow.

They both use blue type lasers don't they?
 
Nik00117 said:
I heard estsimates as high as 60 GIGs of storage even if the discs costs 10 or 15 bucks a PIECE! it' be worth it for me to buy.

Try 200Gb

Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is something I've been looking into very much, lol
 
I said that :p

200GB would be great.

What have they got the storage of HD-DVD up to? Or haven't they surpassed it?
 
Paradox said:
Well, In order to succeed in a competivie business, You must make your product seem great.

Immagine sony saying "Eh, Our UMD isnt the best it could be, buts its all we've got.. Don't worry though, It'll only fade away ina couple years or so" People wouldnt have bought it in the first place lol

There's a difference between hype and description. If they just described their product and what it could potentially do, then fine, I would have some expectations. But to see them hype up UMD like crazy only to see crap rain from the heavens is very dissapointing.

As for the whole Blu-Ray and HD-DVD war, I think it would be great for both camps to get together and work together. For instance, the large capacity of HD-DVD would be perfect for High-Def movies or large games while the cheap price would be a win-win for all. For backup/storage or commercial use, Blu-Ray's very large capacity is at advantage here. Imagine backing up your whole hard drive into one BD Disc!

Kage, yes, both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD use blue lasers instead of the normal red lasers. For 200gb Blu-Ray, that would be expensive. I think it's like 25gb single layer and 50gb dual-layer. HD-DVD is 10gb or 15 single-layer and 25gb dual-layer. Good enough for High-Def movies considering that current movies using the VOB format hardly use up the whole 4.7gb of single-layer DVDs. About Betamax, it never took off because it's performance wasn't good enough to justify the price over VHS.

Either way, what I would do is use HD-DVD for movies and games (cheaper too) and Blu-Ray for storage and backing up. To be honest, Blu-Ray's price to performance (capacity in this case) is just too high for normal media use. For backing up I wouldn't mind, but for normal $10-$15 movies that you buy from Costco or something, that just isn't worth it.
 
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